Seattle may make harassing homeless a crime

But measure is largely symbolic

Published 10:00 pm, Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Harassers who target the homeless could soon be charged with hate crimes under a proposal approved Tuesday by a Seattle City Council committee.

The measure would add the homeless as a class specifically protected under an existing city prohibition against malicious harassment based on gender identity, marital status, political ideology, age and parental status.

The move is largely symbolic. If approved by the full council, the law would have little practical effect in city courts, said City Attorney Tom Carr. As a gross misdemeanor, malicious harassment carries no greater penalty in municipal court than does regular harassment, Carr said.

Meanwhile, the charges usually require city lawyers to meet a more difficult burden of proof: both the facts of the case and the motivation behind it, he said.

Still, Carr and other backers of the change say it sends an important message to potential perpetrators and to policymakers in Olympia -- where such a move could make a significant difference.

"When you're homeless, especially women, you're afraid all the time. You're afraid when you sleep -- even if you're in a shelter," said Anitra Freeman, who has been homeless. "We have to send a different message to our children, to everyone out there."

City officials and advocates for the homeless plan to complement the new law with increased education efforts, said Julie Nelson, acting director of the Seattle Office of Civil Rights. "Many hate crimes are from young people," Nelson said.

Activists are optimistic that state legislators will consider similar changes to state hate-crime laws, they said at the Public Safety Committee meeting. Under Washington law, county prosecutors can charge malicious harassers with a felony, Carr said.

But city lawyers rarely charge people with malicious harassment, Carr said. If the case is serious enough, they refer it to the county for charges under state law. Otherwise, Seattle lawyers usually pursue regular harassment charges.

For example, through September of this year, city lawyers charged only one person with malicious harassment. By contrast, they filed 451 charges of harassment, many stemming from domestic violence cases.

In 2006, city lawyers did not charge any one with malicious harassment. But they lodged 600 counts of harassment charges, Carr said.

"If you were forced to file a malicious-harassment case, you'd be less likely to get a conviction," Carr said. That risk carries no greater potential criminal sentence in Municipal Court. "I can imagine a set of circumstances where a prosecutor might want to fight it. But, for the most part, you're going to want to make the easiest case you can to prove."

"The council wants to make a statement about protecting people, and that's their job and that's fine," Carr said. "It's a worthy goal. It's just not, from a technical criminal (justice perspective), something that changes much."